


Molotov cocktails and Drum beats

by magdalyna



Series: Cultverse [1]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Creepy, Cults, Dubious Consent, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:45:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdalyna/pseuds/magdalyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy reflects on the events in his life leading to starting a cult with Pete Wentz</p>
            </blockquote>





	Molotov cocktails and Drum beats

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the cultverse that queenofhell on LJ created. 
> 
> Cults, dub con and general creepybadwrongness abound.

**1**

Andy was always a strange child; he just never let that on until much too late.

He was very young when his father died, and everyone said how well-adjusted he was. He didn’t remember the man that much so was able to move on. His mother did the best an overworked, underpaid nurse could do with an electrical bill to pay and a five year old to raise. It’s not her fault that he was outside her help. 

 

**2**

He joined a group of loosely affiliated members of the Earth Liberation Front when he was 13 because he was so frustrated with the world around him that he would go into rages and punch ineffectually at the many brick walls in downtown Milwaukee after school when no one could see him break down. 

People didn’t deserve the beautiful, powerful, ferocious planet that they were taking for granted and he hated them with a passion. Only others who shared his views were tolerable. Otherwise, he didn’t care what happened to humanity. This was probably the earliest, barest hint of his later message. 

By 15, he had instigated numerous incidents and protests and was second in command of their little group of 30. He was an ecoterrorist prodigy. 

 

**3**

Music was his other constant. 

Drum beats were always inside of him, itching and skittering to get out and into people’s ears. Let the sounds infect others, he thought viciously when they wouldn’t go away after a few years.

It was Lars Ulrich’s sound that made him finally decide to let his sound escape. The first two records that he ever bought were _Ride the Lightning_ and _Van Halen_. His favorite off of _Ride the Lightening_ was _For Whom the Bell Tolled_.

He saved his meager allowance for months and finally was able to buy a drum set when he was 14. He practiced whenever he had the time between homework and the ELF. Pretty soon he was beating out songs from the bands that he knew enough of and the sounds that were inside of him. He liked what he heard. 

 

**4**

He had high grades and easily got into the University of Wisconsin. 

Freshman year, after 4 years of heavy drinking in high school, he decided to go straight-edge. During his time with the local ELF, most of them were vegans. He had stopped eating red meat quickly enough, but never really took the plunge into the vegan lifestyle. It was always something of an issue. But then, he totally committed himself to it. 

He scoped out the scene at school and decided that the hippie environmental fringe needed better leadership. Needed leadership period. He knew they could get things done, if they tried. So he set to work making friends, contacts, building a reputation for himself. 

 

**5**

It wasn’t long before the large group dwindled and coalesced into something powerful. 

He was in charge of course. His little group of 40 dedicated, if slightly impressionable and naïve young hippies were successful most of the time. There were a few slip ups, since most of the members were new to ecoterrorism, and acts of major and minor illegality in general, but Andy was confident in their continued progress and potential.

In senior year, right along with preparing his thesis on environmentalism throughout history (being half a history major), he chose a committee of successors. The decision was well received by the group. 

 

**6**

He left UW with a double major degree and the keen knowledge that that particular branch of the ELF would continue to flourish. He also left with a fully formed radical idea all his own. He was proud and humbled at the same time. 

It started as idle discussion within his first ELF group over many nights after successful and sometimes not so successful missions. Valerian root tea would be being drunk, along with some member or another’s enthusiastic attempt at vegan cooking. They would talk about everything under the sun, from what went wrong and how they did a mission right to starting fires with stones and wood to Faulkner and his huge toolishness. 

It was sprawled and uneven but was eventually distilled into this:

 _Civilization was a cancer on the world and the most logical solution to this problem was its utter and complete collapse and demise._

He was a total nerd who loved video games and comic books and movies and music. These would be the first things to go, what with people trying to survive. He would miss them but his message is more important. 

 

**7**

He didn’t meet Pete until after college.

H sound was still spinning and thrumming inside of him. That had never stopped, once it started. He dealt with it by being in bands. There were maybe three or four since high school was a bit of a blur due to pickling his liver with strong drink and he so didn’t quite know the exact number. 

But he does remember Arma Angelus and Racetraitor. It was how he met Pete. 

 

**8**

Pete was manic and genius and energetic and charismatic and geeky and had so much potential. He was self medicating with bands, too. Andy saw a part of himself in Pete. 

Pete had a message all his own. 

Andy recognized it as the pretty bullshit wrapped around a need for attention and power over people that it was. He respected this, realized he could use this as a vehicle for getting his own point across, slipped in like a roofie to the masses at shows. It was for this reason that Andy thought Pete was a genius. 

They understood each other as mutual users. 

Pete knew that Andy would never be under the thrall that Pete could put other people in because Andy knew what Pete was trying to do. They respected each other because of this and began planning. 

Joe came a little later to Arma. 

 

**9**

Joe was sixteen and gifted in way that Andy was sure that he didn’t realize in playing the guitar. 

Joe reminded Andy of the campus hippies that he had coaxed and wrangled into an elite, underground, earth friendly terrorist cell. The comparison brings back fond memories of guerrilla tactics and code names. 

He’s not sure what exactly Pete does to convince Joe’s straight laced, Stepford parents into letting Joe tour with them, but he doesn’t question small things like that. He saves his energy for when Pete gets really frenzied. Besides, things like the Thrall of Pete aren’t something that can easily be explained anyway. 

He and Pete are merciless with hazing and taunting Joe in small and big ways when the summer tour rolls around. Joe just rolls with it. It's apparently a personality trait. 

 

**10**

Andy isn’t really sure when Pete started raping and mindfucking scene kids in the back of their van, but he is pretty sure Joe was one of the first. Andy was there when it happened, at least. Pete allowed him that luxury. He was the band’s cofounder after all. Joe was a screamer but Andy just turned the radio up. 

After, Joe has a different look in his eyes. The Pete look. 

He gets a thrill knowing why its there, knowing that _maybe, just maybe,_ they can change the world. Joe knows Pete’s message now. He feels saved by it, feels grateful that he was chosen to be a part of something this special. Andy is just amused at this. 

Pete’s message has grown, has shades of Andy’s message. Pete’s message is done first, always first, and then Andy’s. Pete likens the shared message to whiskey and a chaser. Andy thinks maybe a Molotov cocktail is more accurate. But that’s just him. 

 

**11**

Fall Out Boy was Joe’s idea at first. 

Pete was perfectly content with being a legend among the hardcore scene kids of Chicago, playing to packed clubs and warehouses and drinking whisky with the special chosen few of the lost boys and girls to spread his message to. Save their lives, change their eyes. He was like Tyler Durden only real. 

Joe had different plans. 

He wanted to be a little more pop, a little more trendy, a little more Green Day, get more exposure of Pete’s message. He was the one of them who first talked about going global, although Pete would have gotten to that point soon enough. 

Andy was unsure. Surely, someone among the tangled sheep mass of critics, corporate suits and even clever fans, would realize what they were trying to do. Surely, they would be stopped before they could even start. His and Pete’s combined message was too radical to be slipped like roofies into people’s minds, owning them completely. Someone would find out. Paranoia was never a friend, but now it slipped into his mind like a lover.

Andy desperately could not let that discovery happen. 

 

**12**

Patrick was the last addition to their merry band of musical drug peddlers and hypnotists. 

He happened by accident, a lucky fluke. Joe’s fluke, actually.

Joe had met this awkward, knowledgeable fifteensixteen year old at Borders and got to talking and soon Patrick was set to meet Pete. 

Andy was not there, but knew every second of it backwards and forwards because Pete wouldn’t stop talking about it when they meet up later that week over whiskey and tea. 

Pete had always been the lyrical mastermind in their bands; he just lacked the sound, the melody, to go with them. It was up to Andy and whatever poor bastard of a lead singer they had with them at the time to puzzle out how to make Pete’s poetic ramblings work.

But now Pete had a different, kind of frenzied look in his eyes when he spoke of Patrick, this miracle Voice like a gift from God and Satan and Santa Claus and Jack the Pumpkin King all in one. Like he could finally get the words flowing through his veins like honey and battery acid out into the real world. Patrick could make him complete, Pete told him. 

Andy had a flash of maybe, just maybe this could work when Pete said that. 

Patrick was still hesitant to join them, still had a life outside of Pete. Andy heard from Joe that Patrick wanted a drummer to be in it before he joined. Since Joe knew, this meant Pete knew. Andy did what Pete wanted him to do and joined the band. Several hours later and one conversation with Pete’s Voice, Andy was pleased to know that Patrick would be joining. Pete was rapturous when he heard the news from Joe. 

Andy just waited. 

 

**13**

One of the many things Andy knew about Pete was that he was sporadically a perfectionist, especially when it had to do with things he didn’t want to fuck up to hell. 

Like Patrick.

There was nothing quick or rushed about Patrick’s van time, when Pete decided to start it. 

Patrick had to be perfect, Pete kept telling him, spilling his secrets at 3 in the morning when they both should be sleeping. Joe heard these vague monologues too, sometimes, but it was always Andy who heard them all. Patrick had to be perfect, because Patrick was going to be his Voice. Andy would watch as alcohol or pot worked their way down Pete’s throat, lungs, body as Pete said these things. He would imagine the stains they made, the poison of the substances changing Pete subtly until he looked like a monster on the inside, to match the one forming in his head. 

Patrick had to be perfect and this was drilled into Andy and Joe’s heads. They didn’t mind, didn’t question because Andy was half the message and Joe believed the message. 

 

**14**

When they are leaving for their first tour as Fall Out Boy, Pete told him quietly, away from Joe and Patrick, that it was time. Andy looked at him for a second before he finally understood what Pete was talking about. He blinked. Pete just flashed a shark smile.

Andy is the designated driver mostly because he hasn’t drunk or done drugs in nearly a decade. He opens the driver side door and hears Pete ask Patrick if he’s ready. Andy knows the face that Pete is making, because he’s seen it numerous times by now. It’s intense, serious, and Pete has perfected looking like he will save you with this one look on his face. Andy thinks Pete’s a genius for it. 

He gets in and starts up the engine. He fiddles with the radio as the others get in. Joe slides the door shut. He begins driving. Pete is busy breaking Patrick into a million tiny pieces and will put him back together again in precise, timed thrusts. Andy has watched this dance of terror and message spreading before. He will watch it again. 

_For Whom the Bell Tolled_ starts up on the radio, and he hums along, voice cheerful and slightly melodic. 

Pete will get his Voice, Andy will get his anarchro-envrionmentalist jihad, Joe will get to be a part of something powerful and Patrick will have the highest honor of bringing songs to life. They will all get what they want. 

Andy will make sure of it. 

 

~fini


End file.
